Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

Finally caught up on another little task this morning; getting the stencils back onto the Reels, Cable No. 2 Mk II for the 52-Set.

These reels are identical to the standard, similar reels of this type issued by both the Canadian and British Armies, but like a number of the items Canadian Marconi Company issued with the various 52-Set Kits, they ordered a number of reels directly from a manufacturer, and a CMC Part Number was added into the stencils for these items.

Since the stencils applied to the similar, but more robust reels used with the Aerial 4-Section that came with the 52-Set, were sprayed in a fairly light coat of flat white paint, I decided to go with the same process for this cable reel.

The first step was to trim down the two stencils I had made last year, so they would fit properly on either side of the hub assembly on the free end of the reel, as per the reel used with the horizontal aerial. Once the two stencils were properly trimmed and taped down, I masked off all the exposed areas on the reel with newsprint and applied several light coats of flat white spray paint from a height of about 18 to 20 inches and let the paint more or less float down onto the reel, to minimize any excess spray getting driven under the oil board. It took a few careful passes from several different directions to get a paint density comparable to the original markings on the aerial reel, and 20 minutes later, I was able to remove the stencils and found no trace of overspray anywhere.

Nice to have one more part of the project out of the way.


David

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Finally caught up on another little task this morning; getting the stencils back onto the Reels, Cable No. 2 Mk II for the 52-Set.

These reels are identical to the standard, similar reels of this type issued by both the Canadian and British Armies, but like a number of the items Canadian Marconi Company issued with the various 52-Set Kits, they ordered a number of reels directly from a manufacturer, and a CMC Part Number was added into the stencils for these items.

Since the stencils applied to the similar, but more robust reels used with the Aerial 4-Section that came with the 52-Set...

Ha. Haha.. Hahahahaha...

I bought some "Reels, Cable, No.2" off eBay, and discovered when they arrived why the MoD had surplussed them.

The idiot manufacturer had mis-read the drawings, and cut the reel cheeks from steel plate of the maximum thickness on the drawing (which I think was supposed to be a pressed-in stiffening rib, though it may have been the soldered-on reinforcement of the reel edging that protected the user from the sharp edge of the tinplate cheek. Either way, each reel weighed several pounds - rather more than the correct design with the full quantity of wire on it.

Thankfully the original waist-mounted cable layer was long obsolete or the unfortunate user would have had difficulty walking in a straight line.

I think I still have one somewhere.

Chris.

[David Dunlop]

Wheels for a railway in your back garden, Chris?


David

[David Dunlop]

I thought a Progress Report on the 52-Set Project would be useful at this point in time. Work is still progressing, but in an ‘educational’ direction for a while.

I have never been one to start something without a plan, as much research ahead of time as possible, and a supply of the necessary parts needed for the work at hand to see it through to completion. It has always seemed more effective to disassemble something once, do whatever is needed to bring it back to good working order and then reassemble it

The work needed on the Sender has gone as far as I can take it at the moment, until I can sort out sourcing all the proper, available components efficiently, to fix what has been found needs attention in one go around. It would drive me nuts if the Sender was sitting in pieces for weeks on end while I bounced from pillar to post getting things done. I know the majority of passive and low voltage circuits in the Sender are in good working order and it is in the HT1 and HT2 circuits where items still need to be addressed.

In order to keep things going with the project at this point, I need to redirect my attention back to the Supply Unit once more. It still has a number of physical issues that need to be fixed/attended to, along with a couple of electrical mysteries related to the Receiver Vibrator Supply section. The Supply Unit, is a very compact design that even the Canadian Marconi Company admitted to in its documentation for the set. Repacking the dynamotor bearings and inspecting the brushes can be done with a minimum of careful disassembly, but is so much easier if they are both free standing on the work bench. To replace the dead Drop Cord, however, the front panel needs to be removed, and to remove the dynamotors, the case surrounding the Receiver Vibrator Supply must be removable from the Supply Unit Chassis, to gain access to the right side mounting bolts of the two dynamotors. That latter issue was what prompted me to focus on the stuck Receiver Vibrator Supply Case last year and get it to work properly. As you may recall, part of that work required removal of the Blower Motor assembly to access all the RVS Case hardware and I took that opportunity to clean and restore the blower components so that all Supply Unit parts that should still be in factory original Gloss Navy Grey, are now in that condition and done.

At this point in time, the only thing stopping work from proceeding on the Supply Unit is the need for correct luminous green decals to put onto the front panel when all other work on the Supply Unit has been completed, prior to final reassembly. As noted upon initial examination of the Supply Unit when it first arrived, the current decals were a 1960’s era remake item using yellow luminous paint, and too small a font. Why the Government at that time went with the most expensive, hard to find colour of luminous paint, instead of the cheaper, more common green, I do not know, but they did. The workmanship of applying the decals was beyond poor and subsequent damage to a number of them means overall, they have to be replaced.

I have now sorted out the steps required to replicate the correct looking decals for the Supply Unit. Making the water transfer decal sheets is now the challenge. Fortunately, the Operators Manual for the 52-Set contains a full front photo of the original decals for both the Supply Unit and the Coil, Aerial Tuning front panel. The challenge is that both are less than one half the required ‘full size’ image needed to work with for replicating, and this is where it gets tricky. Old printed photographs are composed of a mass of small, grey scale dots, which produce the black and white image you see on the paper. If you are not careful when trying to enlarge/blow up these printed photographs, you end up enlarging the dots to the point they become visible and the image breaks down. If you make a digital photograph of the original print image and try enlarging it, you risk the digital image breaking down into its component pixels and once again, the image breaks down.

I am not sure when it came into being, but there is now an area of digital image media known as Vector Graphics. With it, you can convert a digital photograph into a vector graphics format, which completely eliminates any breakdown of the image when it is enlarged. You can take a photograph of a postage stamp and turn it into a 20 x 40 meter wall mural, if you wish.

So last year, when we finally upgraded our 16 year old iMac to a new one, I also bought a vector graphics program and installed it, with this part of the 52-Set Project in mind. It is now time to learn everything I can about vector graphics and working with it. Not sure how long it will take, but I am actually looking forward to learning something new for the project. It will mean, in all likelihood, a reduction in things to post about on this thread for a while. In any event, we shall see what happens.

David

[David Dunlop]

Since I will not be operating the Sender for a while. I disconnected the 2nd CCP-2 Power Supply from my 12 Volt DC feed system for the wireless bench to tidy up the cable clutter in one corner. I took this opportunity to clean up the twin connector cable I obtained from Brian Asbury for this CPP-2 and the effort paid off, as it now looks much more like its probable ancestor, the Connectors, Twin, No. C1 which was part of the Remote Receiver Kit for the 52-Set. Before and after pictures attached.

While I think of it, the cotton twine on this cable in the before photo has a distinct waxy feel to it. I have noticed this before with most wartime cotton twines used to secure items for packing and shipping, and a few postwar military items as well. It is probably a bees wax based item and may even include fungicides. Anyone know if this would be the case?


David

[David Dunlop]

Since Starting this project, I have been curious about what company the Canadian Marconi Company subcontracted for production of the wireless tent kit they designed for the 52-Set.

The Parts list illustrations gave a very good description of the dimensions for the Wireless tent and its Valise. The tent itself was a slightly expanded version footprint of the then current 2-Man Officers Tent, with a correspondingly longer 2-Section Ridge Pole and pair of End poles. The valise was also slightly enlarged to accommodate thee larger tent components. The original Officers Tent Valise was never identified as such as it was unique to that tent. With the arrival of a slightly larger tent for the 52-Set to work from, the ‘TENT, WIRELESS VALISE’ identification was added to this valise, to avoid confusion in the field, in all likelihood.

To see if the manufacturer of the wireless tent could be identified, I posted the illustration of the valise on the MLU Forum recently and within 24 hours, Colin Alford had responded with some photos of a standard tent valise in his possession, with matching logo, name and date, S.S. Holden Ltd. of Ottawa. The original illustration, and Colin’s two photos are attached here, for your reference. It has only taken 80 years, but once again we now know one more subcontractor used by the Canadian Marconi Company during their production of the Wireless Set No. 52 Cdn.


David

[David Dunlop]

I was looking over my Carriers No. 4 a little while ago, primarily to refresh my memory about what work needs to be done to restore it. The actual restoration work breaks down into initial disassembly of all the little loose bits and separating the upper Box assembly from its lower Cradle assembly, when the time comes to work on it. Locate a few missing parts. Then straighten a handful of bent parts on the right hand side, strip off all the old NATO Green paint and then repaint it in as close as possible to the factory original No. 2 Brown paint. Let it all cure and then reassemble.

As far as missing parts went, the only ones I noticed I needed were all part of the Ground Terminals system located on the lower right side of the Carriers No. 4, where a pair of heavy duty wire braid grounding straps are used to maintain electrical continuity between the upper Box assembly and the lower Cradle assembly, across the insulation/isolation point of the rubber Bridges acting as shock absorbers for the 52-Set. The problem I have is the entire front Ground Terminal assembly is missing on my Carriers No. 4 and the rear assembly is badly bent and appears to be missing its wing nut.

The photographs in the 52-Set Manual suggested there definitely was a wing nut on the rear Ground Terminal, but the front assembly looked shorter in length overall and did not have a wing nut. Not helping was an illustration on Page 53 of the Operators Manual showing a wing nut arrangement on both Ground Terminals, but only the rear terminal actually in use. I got in touch with the owners of known surviving 52-Sets to ask how their sets were configured. All came back confirming just the rear assembly serves as the Ground Terminal, using a longer machine screw fitted with a wing nut and retainer D-Ring. The front assembly is merely a second connection between the upper Box and lower Cradle assemblies, using a shorter machine screw and hex nuts. No wing nut or D-Ring.

So with the help of other owners, I now know the rear Ground Terminal is a 1-1/4 inch long, 1/4 x 20 machine screw equipped with a wing nut and drilled near the end for fitting a D-ring retainer, to avoid loss of the wing nut. The front Ground Terminal is just a 3/4-inch long, 1/4 x 20 machine screw, both ground straps are 5.25 inches long by .75 inches wide heavy duty wire braid.

However, an unexpected discovery turned up in the process.

It seems the Engineers working on the design of the 52-Set at Canadian Marconi Company were quite concerned about the ground continuity for the set when in its Carriers No. 4. So much so, that where the holes are located fore and aft on the lower right side of the Cradle assembly, to which the bottom ends of the wire braid ground straps are secured, the Engineers designed in a large section of heavy duty copper plating against which the wire braid ends would be fitted.

Don Wright in Alberta brought these plated copper areas to my attention, because they have survived on his Carriers No. 4 finished in the factory No. 2 Brown, as per the attached photo. On the Cradle frame of my Carriers No. 4, the front Ground Terminal assembly was completely gone, but all I could see was a smooth NATO Green surface. Don assured me this plating should be there because it is quite thick and should even survive sandblasting, if done, when my Carriers No. 4 underwent its repaint to NATO Green.

Out came some fine emory paper and with just a few careful rubs, there it was, nicely outlined (second photo attached). Oddly enough, once I could see it, I could then feel it with my fingertip. At the front edge of the rectangle, where the NATO Green has worn and chipped over the years, I can now just make out the glow of copper down that line. I am going to pick away at this discovery with further careful sanding and a variety of cleaners to see just how much of this hidden bit of 52-Set design I can recover. Too hard to get at the rear Ground Terminal position at the moment, but it is now marked for a closer inspection when the time comes. The approximate size of this copper plated rectangle I have found is 3.0 inches long by 1.5 inches high.



David